Slavery and Colonial America

This module/week has presented two very important influences on Colonial America: religion and slavery. After reviewing the Reading & Study materials, watching the videos, and working with the Slave Trade Database, how has your thinking changed regarding these aspects of history? Did your search through the Slave Trade Database change your thinking about this aspect of history?

Being fully aware of how the Slave Trade was established was not surprising and after searching through the Slave Trade Database did not change my thinking about the aspect of history. Slave trading was a devastating time in history. Africans were not the only culture sought out for slavery, but it was less expensive to transport them. Most North Americans and Western Europeans may think that slavery existed in the South before the eighteen hundreds, but slavery existed at the beginning of history and has taken many forms over the past six thousand years. When we look back at the lives of slaves throughout history, we find that the core characteristics of slavery are the same. Slavery means the loss of free will, it means that violence will be used to maintain control over the slave, and that the slave will be exploited normally in some sort of economic activity. Nearly every culture and historical period has known slavery, and it has been “collected” differently at each time and place. There have been religious justifications for slavery in many different cultures, and racial differences to rationalize slavery as well. History states that the purpose of slavery was to tend the tobacco and sugar farms. History is exactly what it is, but has changed over time.